‘Long-lost’ outback creature makes 1,500km journey home
For generations, the local population had shared stories about an animal that was wiped out 60 years ago.
Sixty years after it was wiped out from a sprawling Outback stronghold, an iconic Aussie creature has returned home. A charter flight carried 40 brushtail possums from Kangaroo Island, where their numbers are secure, to the Northern Territory where the species is listed as endangered.
In most of the Red Centre the species is regionally extinct. And although they feature in stories, many locals have never seen the long-lost creatures in person.
Cats and foxes are the invasive predators primarily responsible for their demise. The desert isn’t known for its hollow bearing trees that the marsupials use for shelter in the eastern states, so they commonly make use of burrows in the ground, holes in rocky crevices, or in fallen logs, making them easy targets.
Stunning images supplied by Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) on Monday capture the incredible moment they touched the ground in the NT. It is the non-profit group that orchestrated their return to the red desert location.
A convoy of 4WDs can be seen awaiting the plane. Traditional Owners then carried the safely packed possums across the tarmac where they were celebrated with a welcoming ceremony.
Taylor Dixon, who took part in the ceremony said many people in the Anmatyerr felt "emotional" and "happy" about its return. "For myself, I seen it for the first time," he said.
It had been so long since the species had been seen, one of the local rangers asked if the possum was a wombat. The species has an important cultural significance to the area, with dreaming stories that have been passed down for generations.
Johnny Jack, guardian of the Possum dreaming story, said they are really glad to have possums "back on our country and for people to know the possum again".
Anmatyerr man Martin Hagan and Laramba Aboriginal Community member said it was good to see the possums being released back onto country. "It was the first time for me as well seeing that possum being released back to Central Australia," he said.
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The demise of the possum in the Red Centre illustrates how a reasonably common species can rapidly be wiped out. Once called the “common” brushtail, it rapidly disappeared in the second half of last century until it was found only at a few locations near Alice Springs by the year 2000.
Some ecologists have raised similar concerns about the future of wombats and even populations of kangaroo species, which are commercially hunted in their millions, and losing their habitat to housing developments in suburbia.
The return of brushtail possums to the Red Centre is only possible because AWC operates a 9,540-hectare predator-proof sanctuary within its 262,000 hectare Newhaven property, 400 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs.
“Central Australia was full of burying animals like burrowing bettongs, bilbies and brush possums as they provide really nice thermal refuges during really hot times,” AWC wildlife ecologist Dr Tim Henderson told Yahoo News.
“So many animals have gone extinct so quickly after they were annihilated by feral cats and foxes, so they have no chance to come back without intervention like our predator proof fence.
“In Newhaven they can live in the wild landscape with a fence as a buffer. Because at this stage there’s no way many of these small mammals can exist on the outside of the fence.”
By bringing the possums back to the Red Centre, it’s hoped they will adapt to the local environment. Once they are thriving inside the fence, and feral predators have eventually been controlled in the surrounding area, it’s hoped they will re-establish themselves across a wider range.
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